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Low Cost/Power HPC

"Is such a cluster possible? Before we take a look at some real
options hitting the market, let's take a look at some numbers. In a
recent article at Extremetech, they discuss a paper by researchers
at Harvard and Microsoft that seeks to prove that a small,
power-efficient core like the Intel Atom chip can be better suited
for search applications. The paper is due to be presented at the
International Symposium on Computer Architecture in Saint-Malo,
France, on June 19.

"According to Extremetech, the paper states that with an average
power consumption of 3.2 watts, the Atom (single-core 1.6 GHz
Diamondville) is 19.5 times more power-efficient than a Xeon (L5420
quad-core, 2.5-GHz, Harpertown), which consumes 62.5 watts on
average. The Xeon, meanwhile, outperformed the Atom by 3.9 times
for search tasks."